Tom Keane

Advocates Cheer Rise in Crime

Affordable housing advocates today hailed news of Boston’s 66th homicide of the year, a ten-year high for the city. “This is great news for renters and homebuyers,” said one. “If you listen closely, you can hear the For Sale signs being hammered into yards everywhere. And those empty nesters who were once flocking into the city? Now it’s, ‘Bye-bye, Boston’ and ‘Hello, Florida.’”

Over the last decade, Boston’s housing market appreciated at an unprecedented rate, with some areas tripling and even quadrupling in value.  Neighborhoods once considered undesirable or marginal -- such as East Boston, Dorchester, and the lower South End -- became trendy. The result was havoc.  Lower-income and middle-class neighborhoods became unaffordable. Life-long residents were driven out, fundamentally changing the character of long-established residential communities. Area businesses also worried about high housing costs, saying they made cheap labor scarce.

Housing advocates had complained during that time that the city was doing nothing to solve the problem.  “Little did we know how wrong we were,” said one community activist. In what the activist called a “brilliant move,” Boston officials quietly cut the number of police officers on the force by as much as 300. The result: Crime rose.

“All along we were hoping we could put in rent control or get more federal dollars for subsidized housing,” the activist continued. “In retrospect, it’s clear those efforts would have had almost no effect. Crime, on the other hand, works. Sure, there’re some downsides.  But at least you’ll be able to afford your monthly rent.”

Officials from the Massachusetts Municipal Association described Boston's newest crime strategy as a “win-win” for all of the state's cities and towns. “Boston gets its cheap housing back,” a spokeswoman said. "Meanwhile, the suburbs are thrilled -- people are coming back to them in droves.”

Airborne Founder Starts New Company

Victoria Knight-McDowell, the second-grade teacher who invented the popular Airborne cold remedy, announced today a new company that will market goods designed by individuals with no competence whatsoever in their chosen product line.

Among the products to be featured by the new company will be a reading curriculum designed by linebacker for a professional football team, a computer operating system created by a professor in 18th century literature and a set of surround sound speakers built by a dentist.

“None of them knows anything about these products,” Knight-McDowell said. “Our linebacker, in fact, is semi-illiterate and the dentist is deaf.  But as Airborne has proved, a few celebrity endorsements and the public will buy anything.”

Aside from products, Knight-McDowell’s new company will offer services as well.  “We’d like to have auto mechanics handle complex international currency transfers,” she said. “And we’re hoping we can get Donald Rumsfeld to help countries plan wars.”

Knight-McDowell plans to bring the company public immediately through an IPO to be managed by Dunkin' Donuts.

Whole Foods Changes Business Model

Whole Foods Market announced today that it was changing its business model.  The change goes into effect on Thanksgiving Day.

The Company has traditionally operated up-scale supermarkets that offer organic and environmentally friendly goods. Under its new business model, Whole Foods will convert its Massachusetts supermarkets to combination convenience stores and restaurants, all operating under one roof.

"We'll still offer the same high-quality goods we have always provided our customers," said a spokeswoman.  "But now we'll just be called something different."

Earlier this week, Whole Foods was warned by Massachusetts attorney general Thomas Reilly that it would face criminal sanctions should it open its doors on Thanksgiving, as the Company does in many other states.  Under Massachusetts's Blue Laws, supermarkets and many other retailers are prohibited from doing business on the holiday. Restaurants and convenience stores, however, are exempt from the Puritan-era laws.

The Company spokeswoman said the new business model was an "experiment." "We'll try it out for a day," she said. "On Friday, we'll probably be back to being a supermarket again."

New CITGO Sign in Kenmore Square

Massachusetts congressman William Delahunt and Citizens Energy president Joe “For Oil” Kennedy today unveiled plans for a reworded CITGO sign in Kenmore Square. The neon icon has for decades has been a Boston landmark and is well known to fans and television viewers of the Boston Red Sox.

The changes to the sign come in the wake of a deal cut by Kennedy and Delahunt with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Under the terms of the agreement, CITGO will provide steep discounts on oil to low-income Massachusetts residents. Unknown to most Americans, CITGO is wholly owned by the government of Venezuela. The large profits it has earned has enabled Chavez -- whose antipathy to George W. Bush is well known (he calls Bush a "genocidal madman") -- to become a worldwide leader of anti-American sentiment.

“This is a great deal all around,” said Kennedy in a press conference.  “Our alliance with Chavez mocks Bush, undermines American foreign policy in South and Central America, hurts regional trade initiatives, and gives succor to an anti-capitalist acolyte of Fidel Castro. To me, this is what it means to be a Democrat.”

Delahunt agreed. “Even better, by keeping oil prices low, we are ensuring that our residents will have no incentive to conserve fuel or switch to alternative sources of energy. We are doing our part to keep the US economy forever dependent on petrochemicals.” Delahunt has been a fierce critic of a proposed wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod. “I’m hoping this drives a stake through Cape Wind,” he added. “We don’t need windmills as long as we have friends like Hugo Chavez by our side.”

Both men said they expected the reworded CITGO sign, a mockup of which is shown at left, to erected within a few weeks.

Club Rules Anger Menino

Boston mayor Thomas Menino lashed out at leaders of his local social club who have increasingly started to demand that he abide by membership rules.

Menino has been an active member of the large club, the Roman Catholic Church, “for as long as I can remember,” he said. Even as mayor, he still makes time to attend club events on weekends at one of the organization’s local clubhouses, St. John Chrysostom in West Roxbury. However, club director Sean “Pat” O’Malley has increasingly started to criticize prominent club members who refuse to abide by club rules about matters such as gay marriage or abortion.  Just this week, O’Malley said he would refuse to attend a club function – sponsored by a club group called Catholic Charities – that is honoring Menino. The mayor said that was unreasonable.

“It’s only a club,” he said, “a place to meet people, network and do some politicking. O’Malley’s acting as if it should run our lives. That’s just ridiculous.”

For his part, O’Malley would only say that if Menino didn’t like the rules of his club, he was welcome to leave and join another.

Crop Formations Provoke Concern

Mysterious crop “parallelograms” in the Midwest have sparked consternation and are being seized on as yet more proof of an alien presence on Earth.

The parallelograms -- manifesting themselves as rectangles or squares -- are only visible from high in the air, at a distance typical of an alien spacecraft that might be reconnoitering the planet, say UFO researchers.  The researchers first noticed the formations this spring, describing each of the shapes (as shown above) as commonly having a brown perimeter and a green or yellow-green interior.  Even more startling, they say, the colors of the interiors have changed over the intervening months, growing darker green over the summer and now, with the advent of fall, turning an almost solid brown (as seen below).

Yet it is the near-perfect shapes of the markings that has generated the most excitement. “The lines of the parallelograms are so straight that they almost certainly had to have been made by machine,” said Lindsey Wagner, an expert on UFO phenomenon.  “The lines meet at exactly 90 degree angles and there are precisely four -- and only four -- of these extraordinary ‘right angles,’ as those of us in the field call them, in every single formation.”

Wagner added that the shapes are clearly not human-made. “We simply don’t have the technology to cut lines that straight.  In any event, they’re only visible from the air, a perspective that plainly would be impossible for a farmer or some other human on the ground to have.”

In what may be a related event, researchers have also begun receiving reports of dramatic changes in wooded areas in New England, with once green forests now appearing to be red, yellow and orange.  As with the crop parallelograms, the “painted forests,” as they are being called, seem to be the work of someone, or something, that is definitely not human.

God Destroys Pennsylvania Town

God yesterday laid to waste Dover, the small Pennsylvania town whose residents less than two weeks ago voted out eight school committee members who had been proponents of Intelligent Design.

Shortly after the vote, the Rev. Pat Robertson had told the community, “If there is a disaster in your area, don‘t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city.”

“I thought about that,” the Deity said in an exclusive interview, “and decided, ‘Hey, I can do anything I want.  Maybe I’ll create that disaster myself.’”

As with previous occasions when the Lord had laid to waste particularly sinful communities, the few righteous citizens living in the town of 1,914 were given a chance to escape. “I warned them not to look back, though,” God said. Those who did were turned into the traditional pillars of salt. “Well, actually, salt-substitute pillars,” God said.  “Have you tried that stuff?  Amazing.  When I created you guys in my own image, I was hoping for good things, but that new-fangled salt-free stuff is really clever.”

When asked to explain why some human actions, such as wars, had not met with Divine Intervention while errant voting in a small town did, God said it was all due to free will. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand, of course.  Things such as the Holocaust, Stalin’s purges, and mass starvation in Ethiopia are all up to you.  But teaching evolution? That really got me upset.”

The Deity further explained that for the most part He kept Himself uninvolved in human affairs except when something was personally offensive.  He did add, however, that He had a “small hand” in the ultimate success of the 2004 Boston Red Sox.

School busing to end in Boston

All Boston school children will have the right to attend “walk-to” schools beginning in September 2006, city school officials announced this week. The new policy closes a chapter on Boston’s painful history of mandatory desegregation and brings about a goal long sought by parents, politicians, and community activists. Moreover, since busing to schools will no longer be needed, the change will save the school department more than $30 million annually in transportation costs.

“It came to me as I was shaving one morning,” said schools superintendent Thomas Payzant.  “I remembered how my father used to tell me he walked ten miles to school every day, and, boom, it hit me like a bolt of lightning, ‘Why not us?’”

After a round of meetings with members of the School Committee, the department promulgated a new policy permitting students to walk to any of the schools to which they happened to be assigned. “Worst case -- say Readville to Eastie -- it’s not even 15 miles,” said Payzant. “And in most cases, we figure it will be well under seven.”

“Even better,” said Payzant standing next to a smiling Mayor Thomas Menino, “this guy promises all the roads will be cleanly plowed during the winter. That’s much better than in my Dad’s day, when he had to make his way through five-foot snowdrifts.”

School Committee chair Dr. Elizabeth Reilinger added that another benefit of the new policy would be to reduce the degree of youth obesity, a significantly growing public health issue.

Thrilled by his success at solving Boston’s busing problem, Payzant has now turned his attention to the system’s lack of racial diversity. Currently, 86 percent of Boston's 58,600 public school students are minorities, a disturbing and sharp increase from years’ past.

“We’ve decided that from now on all Hispanic and Asian students will be designated as ‘white,’” Payzant said. “In one fell swoop, we’ll be 54% white and 46% non-white, making Boston perhaps the most evenly balanced urban school district in the country.”

“It just goes to show you,” he added, “how positive and creative thinking can solve most any problem.”

Pols fear US becoming other nations

“If we don't take action (to improve the US educational system), we'll end up being the France of the 21st century.” (Mitt Romney, Nov. 15, 2005)

In the wake of a groundbreaking analogy by Massachusetts governor and presidential aspirant Mitt Romney, other potential presidential candidates rushed to draw their own comparisons between the United States and other world nations.

Former US senator and 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards began by reiterating his oft-stated concern about “two Americas” and warning that the United States “might become the Germany of the 21st century.” Edwards was uncertain which states would be “East” and which would be “West,” but vowed to tear down walls wherever needed.

Others quickly leapt into the fray.

“If we don’t take control of our beaches,” said Senator Hilary Clinton (D-NY) in a press release, “We’ll end up being the St. Maarten of the 21st century.” Clinton was referring to the island nation’s casual acceptance of nudity which, she warned, might well induce certain high-powered middle-aged husbands to consider straying from their wives.

Peripatetic former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani expressed anxiety that Americans were becoming boring and the country could turn into the “Canada of the 21st century.” Senator John McCain (R-AZ) raised concerns about the increasing use of bleaching and hair-streaking preparations by American women.  “If we don’t take action,” he cautioned, “we’ll end up becoming the Sweden of the 21st century.”

Meanwhile, 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry (D-MA) defended France against Romney’s attacks and warned that, with Romney as Governor, the United States risked becoming the “Massachusetts of 2002-2006.” Reminded that he has represented Massachusetts as US Senator for 21 years, Kerry reversed himself and issued another warning. “I’m worried that if we go forward with this oil drilling nonsense in Alaska, we’ll become the Saudi Arabia of the 21st century,” he told reporters.

Asked why that was bad, Kerry backtracked. “OK, so maybe instead I’m really worried we’ll become like Chad,” Kerry said, ”because no one knows who they are, and sometimes I’m not sure who I am either.”

Vice President Dick Cheney, although officially not in the running for 2008, nevertheless issued his own comparison, saying that the nation’s increasing use of torture, clandestine prisons, and secret trials threatened to make the country “the Soviet Union of the 21st century.”

“Although,” he quickly added, “that is a good thing -- a very good thing indeed.”

France Joins Coalition of the Willing

In a dramatic reversal from past policies, French president Jacques Chirac today announced support for the United States’ efforts in Iraq and pledged to send up to 50,000 French youth to assist in that country’s reconstruction.

U.S. President George W. Bush welcomed the Gallic nation’s changed attitude. “We are delighted to see the Coalition of the Willing growing ever larger,” he said from a White House cafeteria where he symbolically ate a plateful of newly named “French” fries.

Chirac identified his nation’s Moslem and African young adults as the most likely to be sent to aid the war-stricken country. “They would be the most effective,” Chirac said. “Many of them look like Iraqis anyway and they speak languages common to the region. Some of our other youth – especially those descended from families who have lived in France for generations – would have a harder time relating to the Kurds, Shi’ites and Sunnis.”

Chirac said that the shipment of the youth to Iraq would begin almost immediately.  “We’re also hoping to send along their parents, aunts and uncles to keep them company” he added.